


The Not-Date

by ShinobiCyrus



Series: WHO YOU GONNA CALL? Tucker. Only Tucker was available. [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: (He doesn't have this), Amity Park Is Strange (Danny Phantom), Esperanto, F/M, Future Fic, I did my best, Lunch, Original Character(s), Phuong Foley, Post-Divorce, Tucker-centric phic, and Tucker is more than willing to help new neighbors survive it, apologies for Wulf's, ghost speak, it's only supposed to be LUNCh, phanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:01:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28764465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinobiCyrus/pseuds/ShinobiCyrus
Summary: Should be simple, right? Do a favor for Danny and take care of a ghost problem at some lady's apartment, save lady from ghost.Said lady is so grateful at not being eaten by ghost, she asks Tucker out to lunch. Lady is also intimidatingly cool. It's just lunch, right? Tucker can do lunch.He's totally got this.
Series: WHO YOU GONNA CALL? Tucker. Only Tucker was available. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108811
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	The Not-Date

**Author's Note:**

> After failing to write three different birthday fics for my friend [Becca](https://thickerthanectoplasm.tumblr.com/), I got desperate and decided to do another fic involving Tucker and her OC (and Tucker's future wife), [Phuong](http://thickerthanectoplasm.tumblr.com/post/138873437616/dpocclichecritiquesandpromotions-and-now-its).

Tucker waffled for three days trying to think of someplace for Phuong and him to have lunch. 

The Nasty Burger always worked when he hung out with Danny and Sam- but Phuong was someone her barely knew. The idea of taking her to some trashy burger joint that had been demolished and rebuilt more times than there were Spider-Man reboots just felt…juvenile.

Not that any of his other options were any better. Restaurants were too formal, and a more casual cafe just screamed “lunch date.” Which is not what this was. At all. 

He’d done his best to be as clear as could be on that. Anything resembling a date was so beyond Tucker’s ability to handle. The last thing he needed was to send mixed signals with the wrong lunch setting.

(Hell, the last thing _anybody_ needed was prolonged exposure to the smoldering, irradiated wreck that was Tucker’s Foley love life.)

Which still left him with…absolutely no idea where they should go. 

God, all this drama over _Lunch_. There was no word in English or Esperanto that could accurately express just how painfully pathetic Tucker was being, right now. Maybe the Germans had a word for it. This seemed like something they’d have covered. 

Nah, screw that. Confidence was the name of the game. He’s totally _got_ this. He fights ghosts on a semi-weekly basis, has gone through inter-dimension portals, hacked a robot-ghost assassin, and briefly ruled a whole kingdom as a power-crazed tyrannical ghost-pharaoh…

Actually…scratch that last one. No need to revisit that. Teenager stuff, everyone goes through that phase.

The point was, Tucker was a grown man with a tech job, an apartment, alimony payments, and goddamn _time travel_ experience. He could handle a totally platonic lunch with a minimum of panic texts to Valerie. Sure, Ms. Hunts Her Prospective Love Interests may be in the eternal four-way-tie of scariest ladies he knows, but at least she’s safer than the alternative. There was desperate, and then there was _desperate._

Sam would have broken his feeble protests on the not-date status of the lunch on the peak of a single raised eyebrow while balancing little James on her hip. Danielle would insist on being his wingman, Jazz would be a post-doc shark smelling ‘unresolved issues’ in the water, and Danny-

Danny would try to be _supportive_.

Valerie listened to his plight with the same patient silence she probably used for lying in wait with an ecto-rifle and suggested a practical, easy solution. 

The answer was, of course, Meatheads. Which Tucker of all people should have figured out sooner- because _Meatheads_. You ordered at the register, but after you sat down and they brought the food to your table. Perfect middle ground. 

Yeah, Tucker was counting this as a win. The bar was set ludicrously low. 

He goes early because it was easier than sitting in his apartment refreshing traffic conditions on his phone trying to math-out arrival times and debate how early is early before it’s back into descriptive German adjectives levels of pathetic again. Ordered some fries to settle the nervous queasiness, which didn’t really help because cajun seasoning is delicious but the very opposite of calming.

He didn’t think anything much over Phuong being five minutes late. She was new in town, and even with GPS going to new places was a hassle.

By the time she was fifteen minutes late he was guzzling his second ill-advised mixed fountain drink abomination and jittering his leg, constantly looking from his phone to the door as though she could slip in between the ticks of seconds. Jeez, get a grip, Foley. So she was fashionably late. Watch, she was going step through that day any second and you’re gonna feel like such fixating tool Vlad will probably swoop in and sue you for copyright infringement.

Twenty minutes he- he doesn’t even know. She’d text if she was running late, right? Even if she’d come to her senses and the ‘OMG You Saved My Life From A Ghost’ gratitude finally wore off she’d still…like…tell him.

She didn’t come off as someone who would bail without warning. All that time in her apartment, Tucker thought he’d gotten a pretty good indication what kind of person she was. Witty but hiding it behind that poker face. Tough too- most people would be screeching and next to useless when that ecto-heap of a ghost crawled out of her sink. Tucker had plenty of experience with tough, kickass women, but hers was an…ordinary, down to earth strength. The kind you built for yourself by hand, brick by brick. 

Sturdy. Decent. If she had something to say, she’d say it properly to Tucker’s face.

Half and hour late and no word. Checking his phone for the umpteenth time revealed it’d been a fully thirty-three seconds since he last checked. The couple a few tables behind him chatted quietly in a language that wasn’t English. Re-reading the last text conversation with her; they’d said 1:00, right? Yeah, and it was definitely _today._

God, he was such a self-absorbed idiot. Phuong wouldn’t just blow him off- not without good reason. Plenty of perfectly normal reasons; in Amity, plenty of not-so-normal ones, too. Maybe he should call? Or send a text to see if she was okay? Then again, one text would probably lead another and then Phuong would quickly get an alarming amount of babbling text spam in her phone.

No, he should still send one. _Just_ one. He typed up a quick, casual message that he immediately deleted, re-wrote to satisfy a criteria he couldn’t even be sure of, and by the time he had wasted yet another five minutes weighing tone ( _casual but maybe it’s too casual like he doesn’t care I mean the last one was waaaaay too desperate like wow stalker much?_ ) and almost didn’t notice when Phuong barreled through the front door. 

She was panting like a marathon runner. Clothes wrinkled, hair wild and windblown. Tuck stared dumbly at her, so she was the one who spotted him and immediately made a beeline for his table, practically collapsing into the opposite chair and still breathing hard. 

“I’m…” she gasped out, wiping a sheen of sweat on her forehead. “Am _so_ sorry. There was a- I don’t even _know_.” She gestured wildly, flailing and failing to charade it. “I was just. Walking. Here. On time. And there was this…this noise. And then this thing- person. I…I knew her, but. No, there was an…explosion first?”

Tucker spied the rest of the tables in his periphery. They were getting a few looks, but besides the sudden hushed indecipherable chatter from the two behind them, it would take more than a slightly disheveled woman to grab someone’s attention in Amity.

“That…would explain the uh…you know you have a bit of glass in your hair?” Tucker reached over and carefully plucked a glimmering little chunk of marble-sized glass and wrapped it carefully in his napkin. 

She felt around her abused-looking hair. ”Crap! Is there any more?” She looked down at her the state of her shirt. “Shit, I look like a mess.”

Tucker slid his pop over to her. “Here, take a drink of this and just…breathe a little.”

She obediently took the cup, popped off the lid and guzzled straight from it rather than the straw. Tucker watched with almost morbid fascination while she keep chugging, throat working steadily, until she finally slammed it back down on the table like something much stiffer. An echo of leftover, half-melted ice settled hollowly. “I hate soda,” she said.

Blasphemy. Tucker had concocted - nay, _perfected_ \- that mixed drink formula himself, and the Illinoisan in him demanded she call it _pop_ , dammit. Still, priories. “That’s fine. Let the hate flow through you. Feel better?”

She was surprised by the belch she replied with, looked sheepish, and nodded instead. 

“So.” Tucker folded his hands on the tabletop. ”Explosion?”

Phuong’s brow furrowed, like she was trying to remember something but second-guessed herself. “I…I think Ember McLain tried to kill me.”

“Ah.”

The caffeine seemed to have righted her head. She narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. “You don’t seem even a little surprised.”

“I mean, I’m a little more informed than most because of the Fentons- but yeah, we were kind of due for an Ember tantrum. She has this on-again/off-again thing with another ghost and when _they_ go off-again, _she_ tends to go off.”

“Like blowing up a hipster record store some people minding their own business might be walking past?”

“She’s pretty much the reason you won’t find a Hot Topic in city limits.” Seeing his opportunity, Tucker propped up his hands under his chin and grinned at her. “That doesn’t explain how you _recognized_ her, though.”

“I…refuse to answer that questions on the grounds that it might incriminate me.”

“I didn’t know Ember’s albums were popular outside of Amity.”

“She was a world phenomenon- _everybody knows her name_!” Phuong burst out with what Tucker suspected was a lingering residue of musical thrall that had probably been implanted there since she was a teenager. Damn, talk about getting music stuck in your head.

“I’m only surprised you were into something so…mainstream.”

“So I’m not as picky with my music as I am with my movies. No one goes around singing lines from Hitchcock movies because they get stuck in your head.”

“Well, at least you survived an assassination attempt from your teenage-rebellion phase.”

“Only because some…some…super hero, I guess? He was literally wearing this black spandex.”

Years of training kept the grin off Tucker’s face. “Snow white hair? Glowing green eyes?”

“Yeah, that was the guy.”

“Congrats, you just got your first rescue from Danny Phantom. You’re practically an Amity…ite? Amityvill…ian? What would that be?”

Right there, Phuong looked like she had officially reached the tail end of her suspension of disbelief. “Danny…Phantom? You can’t be serious. What is he, some ghost superhero?”

“Pretty much. Keeps most of the meaner ghosts from getting too out of hand. Blowing up a shop was a little more extreme than usual- most the time it’s some floating boxes and a ‘Bewaaare’! Y’know. Wednesday stuff.”

By this point, Phuong’s fingers were carding through her already frazzled hair. “Of course there’s a ghost superhero. Why wouldn’t there be a ghost superhero. I find one nice apartment over the border with decent rent and now I’m getting blown up and there’s _superheroes_.” She looked up him, eyes screaming for sanity. “ _Please_ tell me he’s the only one. That’s there’s not like…a pack of super-friends or something I need to be on the lookout for.”

Their neighbors’ indecipherable conversation had picked up again- which Tucker found distracting. It was weird too- he couldn’t understand it, but he could almost swear he had heard it before. Japanese? Korean? Hindi? No…

Wait.

“Well, there’s…a couple,” he admitted, trying not to enjoy the bang as Phuong’s head met the table. “There’s the Red Huntress- she flies around on a rocket board in this red and black armor. Usually stays out of the limelight- not nearly as active in the media as Danny Phantom. Then there’s…well. I guess who could call her Phantom’s side-kick. _Invisobelle_.”

Two tables behind, a chair scraping and some muffled words. Tucker kept his face schooled. 

“Invisobelle.” Phuong sighed. “That’s just awful.” 

He shrugged. “Like I said, she’s just Phantom’s sidekick. Not nearly as popular or as active as him.”

Before Phuong could say anything else, her very discontented stomach gurgled a noisy protest. 

“I,” she announced, “am so hungry I would murder the cow myself if it was faster, and I don’t care how many calories it is or what my mom would say about it because I have goddamn earned it.” She cocked her thumb back towards the line at the register. “I’m going to go up to order. Have you eaten yet?”

He tried not to sound guilty. “Just some fries?”

“Okay, tell me what you want and I’ll do it for the both of us. And I’m paying. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten.”

“I know better than to argue with you about it,” Tucker said.

“Good man.”

After she left with both of their orders, Tucker waited until she was well out of earshot before standing up and approaching the couple two tables behind theirs. 

They both stiffened at his approach. One of them hunched behind an open copy of the _Amity Park Angl_ e that was three days old.

Dammit, he freaking _knew_ he was hearing ghost-speak.

Danielle, as incognito as she could manage in aviators and a My Little Pony™ beanie gasped unconvincingly.

“Whoooaa, Tucker? You’re here _too_? No waaaayy! Only in small towns, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m completely buying this.” He pulled down the newspaper to uncover Wulf wearing a baseball cap over his flattened ears and sporting a pair of novelty shades that would be comically large on anyone but a literal giant wolfman’s long nose.

_“Uh…Amiko Tuck! Kio surprizo!”_

“Already tried that one, dude,” Elle warned him in a sotto whisper.

A distant, out-of-body perspective yanked him violently from solid ground so he could examine the situation from above just to confirm that yes, this really was his life and was something he had no choice but to deal with. An ache bloomed behind Tucker’s eyes- the start of a bad headache like his brain was punishing him for putting it through this. Fair enough. Taking off his glasses let Tucker both massage the pain out of his temples and make it much easier to not look at them.

“You two. Can turn. _Invisible_.” He hissed through the pain. “Why the hell-”

“They won’t let you buy food here if you’re not visible.” Danielle explained. “Company policy.”

Wulf picked up a large burger from a tray already littered with the wrappers of past conquest and munched on it demonstratively, like Tucker was still buying the cover story.

“And what, no one minded having a giant wolf-ghost-man just…hanging around the restaurant?”

Wulf swallowed the last of his burger and shrugged. _“Ĝi estas Amity.”_

Danielle nodded. “Yeah, nobody minded. Wulfy-Wulf even got a few phone numbers. He’s a total player.”

Tucker’s head canted, straining to process this new information. Wulf titled down his gunglasses and winked. 

“I. Well. Okay then. That’s just brings up a whole lot of other questions I’m not sure I want answers to.”

“ _Estas la oreloj_ ,” Wulf tipped his cap like an old-timey gentleman and wiggled his ears, suspiciously similar to how a puppy might. “ _Ĉiuj amas la orelojn._ ”

“No. Stop that. No making me wanna pet you instead of yelling at the _both_ you properly about violating my privacy like this.”

“We’re not spying on you, Tuck!” Danielle insisted. “We came here to be supportive!”

“ _Jee, ni estas ĉi tie por vi,_ _Amiko Tucker.”_

“Oh. You were here to support me. While hiding behind last week’s _Angle._ ”

Dani hid her cringe behind an awkward smile. “We were here for you in spirit?”

Wulf chortled. “Heh. _Spirit_.”

“I am _so_ unfriending Valerie for this, the traitor.”

“Aw come on, Tuck it’s not like- we just wanted to make sure you were okay!”

“I know you two don’t get why-” Tucker cut off what he was going to say, breathed, and tried again. “I get it, I do, but I’m just having lunch with a _friend,_ okay? I’m allowed to have those, aren’t I?”

“Well yeah, it’s just-” Danielle sent an appealing look Wulf’s way. “It hasn’t even been a year since you and-”

“ _Ni ne diras ŝian nomon_ ,” Wulf growled. 

Danielle rolled her eyes. “Fine. Since you and Voldemistress finishing signing the paperwork.”

“Elle, I get it. Trust me, I do. I am nowhere near ready to even start thinking about dating. Phuong’s a- look she’s pretty cool, and she’s new here, so she needs a friend to give her the Amity Survival Training. This is absolutely not a-”

“Tucker?” Phuong asked behind him.

“Dankon pro la averto, _Wulf_ ,” Tucker hissed, and turned around. His face burned under her scrutiny. “Uh…hey Phuong! You’re back. You wouldn’t believe who else had the idea to eat here today? Small towns, right?”

“Oh sure, _he_ can do it,” Danielle grumbled.

Phuong, looking as though she hadn’t even heard him, was gaping past Tucker at Wulf. “Who…are your…friends?” The last word she said with skepticism. 

Tucker spoke up quickly to cut off Dani. “Oh. Right. Uh…Phuong, this is Danielle- she’s the cousin of my best buddy Danny, and…this is my very good friend-”

“ _Wulf_ ,” he stood up to his full height and took off his hat in a way that reminded Tucker of old movies, when gentlemen stood up when a lady was present. _“Estas plezuro renkonti vin. Ajna amiko de Tucker estas amiko mia_.”

He held out his hand…paw. Sans the claws, thank God. Phuong looked down at the massive furry hand. Looked up at the enormous, wide-shouldered wolf-man that had at least a foot on her, and accepted the handshake like it had challenged her. “Nice to meet you,” she said. Her hand was pitifully small in Wulf’s palm, but he shook it gently. 

Tucker clapped his hands together. “Greeeaaat, everyone’s introduced so glad hey didn’t you say you two had to rush, Elle?”

“Huh?” Dani was hard to read with those stupid aviators, but thank God she decided to not be a little troll for once. “Oh yeah. Come on, Wulf. I forgot we had to the do that thing in that place that wasn’t here.”

 _“Eh?_ Oh! _Jee, tre okupata. Ni vere devas rapidi-”_

“You don’t have lay it on that thick Team Jacob she can’t even understand you.”

Plastering on a big smile, Danielle hooked her arm into Wulf’s. “It was nice meeting you Phuong.”

“Likewise. Maybe I’ll see you two around.”

Peeking over her sunglasses, she leered at Tucker. “I’m sure you will.”

“Good- _ **bye**_ , Danielle.”

Snickering, Danielle pulled Wulf along with alarming ease, considering their size difference. In his free paw, he held up a few scraps of paper and napkins with scribbled numbers on them. _“Kio pri-”_

“Dude, not _now_. Lot’s of things have changed in the dating scene since you’ve been alive. There’s like…a rule about not calling people right away.”

_“Oh. Mi ne havas telefonon.”_

“Yeah, there you go. Like phones, that’s a big one.”

Phuong waited until they were out the door. “Well they were…interesting. Wulf, especially.”

Tucker scratched the back of his head. “Yeah he. Uh. Definitely makes an impression.”

“Oh, I definitely got a few of those,” Phuong pursed her lips, chewing on a thought. “How long-”

“Since I was fourteen.”

“You two must be very close, then.”

“About as close as two guys that have saved each others’ lives get. Or…un-lives, depending on who you mean.”

“Lot of that seems to be going around,” Phuong noted with a conspiratorial little smile. Like it was their in-joke. Tucker smiled back.

A server came up bearing a tray of burgers. “A bacon-ranch half-pounder with a side of fries?”

“ _Oh thank God_ ,” Phuong seized her tray and sat back down at the table. 

The server looked around the surrounding tables. “Uh…what happened to the-”

“He left, sorry.” Tucker said.

“Aw dammit. I mean,” blushing, the server hastily shoved the tray with Tucker’s food at him. “Enjoy.” And scampered. 

Phuong was already tearing into her burger with gusto. Tucker, taken aback, lingered over his food. She noticed him watching her, and asked with a full mouth. “ _Wahf_?”

“Nothing. Glad I picked the right place.” 

“Thowwy-” She swalloed. “Sorry again I was so late. I would have called but whatever weird guitar blasts Ember was doing cracked my phone. I swear I’m not usually this bad.” 

“Trust me, happens to everyone eventually.”

“While we’re on the subject,” Phuong pointed a fry in Tucker’s direction. “Any other major Amity hazards I should know about? Because at this point, I’m pretty much numb to ridiculous bullshit, so you might as well give it to me all at once.”

“It’s…quite the list,” Tucker warned her. 

“I just had a literal blast from my black-leather past that almost gave me tinnitus. I can handle it.” She opened up her arms like she was inviting a hit. “Come on, what else is there? Are dragons real too? Vampires? Wizards? Government conspiracies? Is this whole town sitting on top of a portal to hell, or something?”

Tucker didn’t answer for a long moment- mostly internally debating whether Clockwork could technically count as a wizard.

“I don’t like how quiet you’re being.” Phuong said. 

“How about this? You eat, I’ll talk.”

* * *

“So do you usually go out to lunch with chaperones, or was that a one-time thing?”

They walked side-by-side down the sidewalk, parting for any fellow pedestrian going the other way. Offering to walk her home was only right, after having a literal scare from a raging dead rockstar on the rebound.

They’d been walking in amiable silence- so the question caught him off guard. “Relax,” she said. “I thought it was kind of sweet.”

“Sweet?” 

“Well, I’m guessing by how much you were trying _not_ to look embarrassed while you were introducing them that their being there wasn’t your idea.”

“No, it was definitely not.”

“Thought introducing me to your ghost-friend was a bit too soon?”

“More like either of them. Danielle had a…weird upbringing and Wulf is…”

“Very loyal, seems like. And nice. At least…I think he was being nice? I paid attention in enough Spanish classes to get the gist of it.”

“I’m actually kind of impressed,” Tucker said. “You dealt with the whole three hundred pounds of fur and claws way quicker than…well…anyone not in our immediate friend circle or non-furries.”

“What can I say? I’m learning to roll with the Amity Weirdness. After getting caught in the middle of a Rocky Horror Show street fight, the giant shaggy dog-man was pretty…tame.”

The emphasis at the end there. Tucker shook his head in mock disappointment. “I saw what you did there, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Also, he’s technically a giant shaggy _wolf_ -man. He’s very sensitive about it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And good side-stepping the topic, by the way. I almost didn’t notice.”

“Doing my best.” He shrugged away another rise of heat in his cheeks. It would be so easy for her to just _ask_ , a few well-target words and Tucker knew he would unravel right in front of her. It felt too much like his feet dangling over a precipice- a feeling he was disturbingly familiar with thanks to a best bro who could fly.

“I won’t ask about her.” Phuong reassured him, and Tucker could almost feel the phantom hand pressing down on his chest east. “But if your friends’ reaction to you going out to lunch with someone is to adorably fail at the covert part of a stakeout…”

“I didn’t take the divorce very well,” Tucker admitted. Understatement of the century. Take a nerd’s natural self-worth issues and throw in the colossal failure of a marriage crashing and burning, and of course clashing with someone who knew you well enough to say just the right things that would stick long after she left.

Phuong nodded to herself. “Y’know, if you ever want to talk about it with someone who wasn’t involved, even if you want to just vent-”

“I make it a rule to never talk about exes on a d-” Tucker stopped himself, wincing.

Of course Phuong noticed. “Never discuss exes on a _what_ , Mr. Foley?” Her smile was just the right kind of smugly teasing, and- aw hell, this lady was so, so dangerous. “I thought this was just a nice, simple lunch between friends?”

“I-it is! I-I just. See, what I meant to say was-”

“And friends,” Phuong went on, as though she didn’t hear his pitiful stammering. “Are practically honor-bound to listen to another friend go on about bad exes and shitty breakups.

“And I,” she pointed at herself, “have had some truly _awful_ exes. Seriously, you would’t believe.”

Oh, he could probably guess. “Bigots?”

“Just the three. I got pretty good at filtering out them out, especially the ones with a fetish. You?”

“Just two. Well…three, counting the homophobe. She thought our two month relationship would somehow trump a few _years_ of friendship with Danielle and her girlfriend.”

Phuong snapped her fingers. “I _knew_ it.” At Tucker’s questioning look, she said: “The aviators.”

“Ha. And that was her trying to be subtle.”

“Morbidly curious what she looks like going all-out, now.”

“She will probably hit on you just to see your reaction.”

“Being irresistible to all sexes is truly a curse,” Phuong replied smoothly. “Okay, my turn: stalkers?”

“Do hauntings count?”

Without skipping a beat: “Depends on what base you go to.”

Tucker choked. “ _What_?”

“Well? Did I stutter? Come on, Foley, out with the dirty details. Was it like that unnecessary Ghostbuster’s scene with Dan Aykroyd?”

“…just second base. But I would like to state _for the record_ that she looked way more alive when she was luring me in before the scary kill-murder-banshee mode.”

“No judgments. I’ve dated my share of cold fish.” That poker-face delivery was so deadpan, Tucker couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “I take it you made it through scary kill-murder-banshee mode unscathed or am I talking to a meat-loving ghost right now?”

“Don’t joke about that- they exist.” Tucker warned her. “And nah, nothing hurt permanently except my pride. Phantom showed up and saved my dumb ass.”

“Hmm. That’s two I owe him, now. Might need to start running a tally.”

“Good luck. He’s saved this town more times than I can count, and you are talking to an obsessive nerd here.”

“Have you ever thought about leaving?” Phuong asked him suddenly. “You said it yourself- this town is dangerous. Haven’t you ever thought you could just…move away? Get out of the spooky warzone and live a nice normal life?”

“Sure. My parent’s argued about it a lot when I was younger. They might still move away when Dad retires, but I…” He looked up at the city. The billboards for Mayor Masters’ re-election campaign, the ‘BEWARE’ posters warning about spectral overshadowing, the cackling ecto-pusses swimming past in the sky. “My other family is here. Danny and Sam, my godson, Danielle, Valerie- that’s her girlfriend, Wulf. I know I don’t matter that much. When you get right down to it, they could get along just fine without me.

“But…I’m not sure I could get along very fine without _them_.”

“I think,” Phuong touched the side of his arm. “You are forgetting that two of those people on that list were so worried about you getting yourself hurt again they put on hilariously terrible disguises and waited over an hour at a Meatheads…just to make sure you were okay.”

Tucker stopped walking. “Oh. I. Guess they did do that. Huh.”

Phuong waited a few heartbeats to let Tucker process this new revelation that his friends _cared_ , and gave his arm a squeeze before letting go. “Does that mean there’s a chance we can have another lunch next week? I still feel bad about making you wait so long.”

“Really, it’s fine. I’m just glad you got through your first real ghost fight unscathed and not running for the hills.”

“Thanks, I think I- wait. That ghost in my apartment doesn’t count as a real ghost fight?”

“Nah, that was just pest control. It doesn’t get serious until the ghosts name themselves and start monologuing. But I wouldn’t object to an encore lunch. And no chaperones this time- honest.”

“Great. A week should give me time to replace my phone,” she took it out, thicker, older, but still serviceable if it wasn’t for the giant crack in its screen. “There wouldn’t happen to be ghost-attack insurance I can get on my next model, is there?”

Tucker’s mouth jumped ahead without his consent. “I can fix that.”

“You. Really?” 

“Yeah, for sure. May I?” She handed the phone to him, to examine. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen way worse than this. Just replace the screen, check to make sure none of the guts got jostled, an Ember-class screen protector; easy fix.”

“How much?”

“You just fed a bored tech geek with a project, consider it already paid for.”

“You’re…” She shook her head in disbelief. “Amazing. How soon can you-”

“Tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest. I can deliver it to your place, if you’d rather not wait.”

“You already know where I live, and I am a phone-addicted millennial getting psychosomatic hives from cell-separation. The sooner the better.”

“Consider it done,” Tucker pocketed it. “Tomorrow, then.”

“It’s a date.”

**Author's Note:**

> God, Amity Park has got to be SO weird for people moving in. The real question is, are the constant ghost attacks worth the low rent?
> 
> I mean... _I'd_ live there if the rent was cheap enough, but that's just me.


End file.
